✓ | sick of losing soulmates [SPENCER REID]

5.2

5.2
( beach(wood) trip. )

☆ ★ ☆

spencer

After Iris' first case back in the field, when they arrive back at Quantico, he finds Iris out in the smoking area on the second floor, smoking.

"Hey," he says, stepping out and appearing behind her, voice soft so he doesn't make her jump with his sudden presence. She turns, smiling, and pressing out her cigarette on the stone barrier. He leans next to her, her crutches between them, unneeded because of the barrier she leans on, and he feels the reassuring touch of the wind as it ruffles through his hair. "I didn't know you smoked."

"Only when I'm stressed," she says. "And I always feel terrible afterward. It's a disgusting habit."

"You're stressed?"

"How can I not be? I've not walked in five months. And this . . . Thing," she says, glancing down at her left leg, seemingly normal until she pulls up her pant leg an inch to reveal shining plastic, "is pissing me off."

"You hate it?"

"I don't hate it," she says, maybe a little too quickly. She breathes deeply, pausing and gathering herself. "I just hate the fact that I have to have it. I hate the fact that what should be there, isn't there."

"Don't say that," Spencer says. "There isn't a default for how we look. And if there is, there shouldn't be. You're not any less brilliant or beautiful because you're missing your left leg."

After a moment, Iris smiles, and both of them are a little pink. "I missed you, Spencer . . . Missed this. Missed work. It felt so good to be out of Virginia, for the first time in . . . So long," she says. "Even if it feels weird to not be kicking down doors."

Like Spencer always does, Iris has signed a contract and given up on heading into places with Morgan, and instead has to stick in the car or back at the satiation until they bring the unsub in. At first, her distaste had been written on her face, but then when they got back with the unsub Morgan let her shove him into a cell, and that kept any complaints quiet.

She drops her pant leg again, grimacing. "It's just hurting. Which is weird, because there's nothing there. I . . . I don't know how to describe it."

"They're called phantom pains," Spencer says. "Three quarters of amputees usually experience the sensation."

"You know when I might stop feeling them? If ever?" When Spencer hesitates, hen shrugs, having no answer, Iris quirks a brow, falling into a smile so easily as she looks at him, and he wonders how on earth someone could suffer so greatly and yet so silently. "Is that a gap in your knowledge I see, Spencer Reid?" she